Mysore & Ooty

Mysore

The land of sandalwood, ashtanga yoga and very interesting ayurvedic massages.  The 3 hour journey from Bangalore was a scenic one with lush green paddy fields and the ever present cows meandering along the roads. We hired a driver for our 5 day trip from Bangalore to Mysore to Ooty (Tamil Nadu) to Kochi (Kerala).  I was quite pleased to find out he didn’t speak much English as often times Drivers like to impart any and all information that they have gleaned throughout their lives –whether it is relevant to the journey  or not!

Mysore's Bazaar

We stayed at the Shree Guru Residency Hotel in Mysore which was like a 5 star resort after the hotel in Bangalore. The best part of the hotel was the incredible vegetarian restaurant on the premises-the food was not only dirt cheap but mouth-wateringly good and I still have dreams about it. The bathroom was as abysmal as that in Bangalore, but just got an extra 50 rolls of toilet paper so that I could layer the seat before sitting down-NOT my favourite experience!!!  Why are we such a dirty nation? My entire family is anal retentive so trying to figure out if maybe we are just an anomaly. Sorry-I digress again (bad habit). Back to Mysore-there is a lovely old palace there and we did our obligatory tourist duty of wandering around it pointing and gasping at the wonders it contained. I think Dan and i are starting to get touristed out as we are finding palaces a little dull at this point. We spent the rest of the day trying to find a Wifi cafe only to realise that this phenomenon does not actually exist in Mysore.

Vegetarian food can be nice (but only in certain places)

The next day Dan and I went off to the Mysore zoo to meet some white tigers and also so that Dan could get to know his relatives (the chimpanzees) a little better.  The funniest part was when we got approached by 4 Indian men asking me if it was alright if I took their picture. Me, being my helpful self, agreed to take their picture but quickly realised their intent when they began positioning themselves around my white man.  I returned their camera with a firm ‘No!’ and rescued Dan from their clutches. Unfortunately, I was not there to save him later that day when we went for our ayurvedic massages. We picked a really bad place and my massage was possibly the worst massage I have ever experienced.  Dan’s massage was probably on par with mine except that the masseuse also offered to massage his sensitive regions to which he replied a polite ‘No thank you’. I suppose the masseuse thought maybe that would make up for the crappy massage.

Sloth bear at Mysore Zoo

Ooty:

So earlier when I was commenting on how great it was that our driver didn’t speak English, I began to realise this was not such a good thing as he apparently couldn’t read any road signs and had no idea where he was driving. The journey from Mysore to Ooty should ideally have taken 2-3 hours but ended up taking 4-5 hours due to the fact that the driver refused to listen when I was giving directions as apparently women don’t know how to read either; he would stop every two minutes and ask people walking on the street which way to go and each person would tell him a different direction; he then took to flagging down passing cars by 1) either cutting them off or 2) flagging them down from the wrong lane while an oncoming truck would be headed our way.  He finally found another fellow idiot driver and the two of them would stop every 5 minutes to discuss the directions despite the fact that there is only ONE road to Ooty!!!!! Lord save me from fools. 

Bling

We finally got to Ooty in one piece and checked into the The Grand Sapphire hotel in Ooty, a hotel which was designed possibly 50 years ago and has not been updated since. The only thing missing was the disco glitter ball in the middle of the room.

Caption Competition?

Ooty is known as Queen of the Hill Stations in India in the Nilgiri district which is also famous for tea plantations. Ooty is particularly famous for its ‘toy train’ which connects Ooty to Mettupalayam, at the foot of the Nilgiris. This mountain railway is in fact now a UNESCO world heritage site. Dan and I caught the train from halfway at Coonor railway station. The train looks like a cute blue toy train with wooden coaches and large windows. It is pushed up the hills from behind by a diesel engines, and it is possibly the slowest train in India as it averages 10.4km an hour. From Coonor, the train reaches the highest point on the track which is 2,218m. It truly is a lovely experience and we paid the princely sum of 3 Indian Rupees each for the privilege and an extra 15 indian rupees to reserve a seat!! You have to love Indian prices.

From there, we decided to go and find a bottle of wine as it was New Years Eve and we thought we could enjoy a drink on the New Years. What we didn’t realize that wine is just not a possibility here. They did sell something called ‘Red Wine’ in a bottle but looking at the regulars drinking this substance, we made the very wise decision to abstain. We drove around for a while looking for somewhere to go and have dinner for New Years, but I had a very bad cold too so Dan and I finally decided to go back to the hotel and have dinner there. It was absolutely freezing in the hotel so we put on as many clothes as we could find including my stocking cap and thick socks, cuddled under the blankets and waited for midnight. Also, I forgot to mention there was no cable tv so we were limited to India today news which was enlightening as always. Not our best new year and I think you will feel our pain when you see our picture below.